A few flaws but entertaining and romantic.
In A’s debut novel, an update of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a Nashville woman struggles with perfectionism, attraction to a Hindu filmmaker, and an overbearing mother.
Mary Poser, 23 as the novel begins, was raised to be sweet, accommodating, and cheerful. A social worker, she spreads herself thin, always running late as she frantically tries to catch up with her many commitments. Mary’s mother, a Baptist pastor’s wife, nags her to get married: “he has to be Southern, he has to be Christian, and it helps a lot if he plays the guitar”—but Jason, the mother-approved wannabe country star, has recently dumped Mary. At the Nashville Film Festival, Mary meets Simha Das, a beautiful, young filmmaker, whose next project is a Bollywood version of Persuasion. They share an instant attraction and spend the night kissing. Upset with herself, late, and trying to text and drive the next day, Mary’s car flips over a bridge into the river. She has a life-altering vision of Simha, his moonstone ring glowing with white light as he tugs her upward from watery death, but she keeps the vision to herself, becoming phobic of the bridge. Simha pursues her with sweet thoughtfulness, philosophical musings, and a night of incredible passion, but Mary feels trapped by others’ expectations. She avoids Simha and allows Jason back in her life, even though he’s far less romantic, considerate, and intelligent. Will she have a second chance to be persuaded by true love? In her debut novel, A makes excellent use of her colorful, well-described Nashville backdrop. A drawback is that Mary’s waffling and inability to stand up to her mother are developed at exasperating length. Simha is obviously perfect, maybe too perfect, while Jason is obviously a dud to almost everyone; when Mary calls herself an idiot, readers may agree. But she’s stronger than she knows, as readers can also see. Apart from overdwelling on Mary’s indecision, the novel succeeds, offering some hot erotic scenes, some surprises, a good metaphor in the uncrossable bridge, and a heroine who grows in understanding herself and her spirituality.
A few flaws but entertaining and romantic.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9876222-2-8
Page Count: 478
Publisher: Angel's Leap
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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